OMAHA, NE-Noddle Cos. has sold the 112,196-square-foot office building it built here for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to an unnamed East Coast buyer for $43.5 million. Noddle, based here, built the J. James Exon building at 120th and L streets for the FBI in 2009, and will continue to manage the property.
Jay Noddle with the company tells GlobeSt.com that it was a tough decision to sell a General Services Administration-leased office, but the company needed to get a return on some investment. “At the height of the downturn, we were finishing six new office buildings,” Noddle says. “It was the worst economic times, but we got them filled and financed. We felt it might be a good idea to put a couple of them on the market, to freshen our capital and take a load off our minds, and we felt like this particular building would be pretty desirable. We were right.”
Not only did the property attract dozens of buyers, they also came from around the world to bid on the property, Noddle says. He attributes the attention partly because of how stable the Omaha office market has been in relation to the rest of the country. “The unemployment rate here is about 5%, and the economy is diverse, with five Fortune 500 companies based here. We’re in 12 states and have done business from Las Vegas to the East Coast, but this is the most stable market we are in.
The Omaha office market is about like the rest of the national markets, with a clear distinction in demand between class A and class B properties, Noddle says. “We had positive absorption for the fourth quarter in a row, and we’ve got pretty good occupancy,” he says.
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